This article discusses the economic impacts of climate change and how they could limit climate change. Lowered GDP would mean lower emissions.
A new study by University of California, Irvine’s Dawn Woodard, Steven Davis, and James Randerson takes a shot at figuring out how important this could be. Working from previously published numbers, they connect the dots and estimate the amount of greenhouse gas emission that could be prevented by the end of the century due to the impact of climate change itself. Reference: PNAS, 2018. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1805187115 (About DOIs).
The percentage of global GDP lost due to future global warming varies widely in the different economic models that have been used. Some simpler ones have projected the cost of unmitigated warming at just a few percentage points by 2100, while a 2015 study put that number at around 20 percent. This would be mirrored by emissions for a number of reasons. Most simply and most morbidly, more people would die early. Labor productivity would drop for other reasons, as well, and resources would have to be diverted to dealing with things like natural disasters, rather than building useful things like infrastructure.